She opened her door. The van’s overhead light blinked on.
“Erainya-”
“Got to find a clear signal.”
“It’s pouring.”
She slid outside in her rain jacket, and waded into the glow of the only street lamp, where everybody and God could see her.
Since the day I apprenticed to her, she had harped on me-getting out of the car while on stakeout was an absolute no-no. You jeopardized your position, your ability to move. Otherwise I would’ve peed a long time ago.
I knew only one person she might break the rules to call-her ENT, Dr. Dreamboat, or whatever the hell his name was, whom she’d met during a romantic prescription for cedar fever last winter and had been dating ever since.
But I couldn’t believe she would call him now.
I was pondering whether I’d have to shove a cell phone up Dr. Dreamboat’s sinus cavity when the porch light came on at the Ortiz cousins’ house.
A heavyset man in a silky black warm-up suit stepped outside. Dimebox Ortiz.
I tried to kill the overhead illumination, found there was no switch. “Shit.”
“Owe me a quarter,” Jem told me, his eyes still glued to his game.
“Put it on my account.”
My “bad word” account was already enough to buy Jem his first car, but he didn’t complain.
I leaned and tapped on Erainya’s window.
Halfway down the sidewalk, Dimebox Ortiz froze, staring in our direction. The rain was drenching him.
You don’t see us, I thought. We are invisible.
Dimebox yelled back toward the house-his cousins’ names, some Spanish I couldn’t catch. He ran for his Lincoln Town Car, and I gave up on discretion.
“Erainya!” I yelled, pounding on the driver’s-side door.
She took the phone away from her ear, just catching the fact that something was wrong as Dimebox’s taillights flared to life and Lalu and Kiko came lumbering out their front door, their fists full of things I was pretty sure weren’t wax apples.
Erainya climbed in, hit the ignition. “Jem, seatbelt!”
We peeled out, hydroplaning a sheet of water into the faces of the Ortiz cousins, who yelled plentiful contributions to Jem’s cuss jar as they jogged after us, brandishing their army surplus door prizes.
Dimebox’s Lincoln turned the corner on Keslake as the first explosion rocked the back of our van. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw chunks of wet asphalt spray up from the middle of the street where our tailpipe had been a moment before.
“Fireworks?” Jem asked, excited.
“Sort of,” I said. “Get down.”
“I want to see!”
“These are the kind you feel, champ. Get down!”
The twins sloshed after us like a couple of rabid hippos.
Up ahead, Dimebox’s Lincoln Town Car dipped toward the low-water crossing on Sinclair.
A few hours ago when we’d driven in, Rosillio Creek had been full, but nowhere near the top of the road. Now, glistening in our headlights, an expanse of chocolate water surged over the asphalt. Clumps of grass, branches and garbage piled up on the metal guardrail. It was hard to tell how deep the water was. There was no other road in or out of the neighborhood, even if we could turn around, which we couldn’t with Senor Dee and Senor Dum lobbing munitions right behind us.
In the PI business, we have a technical term for getting yourself into this kind of situation. We call it fucking up.
Dimebox’s brake lights flashed as he approached the crossing.
“He won’t make it,” I said, as he revved the Lincoln’s engine and plunged hood-first into current.
Ka- BOOM. Behind us, the low-water-crossing sign splintered into kindling.
“He’ll make it,” Erainya insisted. “So will we.”
I started to protest, but she’d already nosed the van into the water.
The sensation was like a log ride-that stomach-lurching moment when the chain catches under the boat. Water churned beneath the floorboards, hammered the doors. The van shuddered and began drifting sideways.
Through the smear of the windshield, I saw Dimebox’s Town Car trying to climb the opposite bank, but his headlights dimmed. His rear fender slid back into the torrent, crunched against the guardrail. His headlights went dark, and suddenly the Lincoln was a dam, water swelling around it, lapping angrily at the bottom of the shotgun window.
“Go back,” I told Erainya.
She fought the wheel, muttered orders to the van in Greek, eased us forward. We somehow managed to get right behind the Lincoln before our engine died.
Our headlights dimmed, but stayed on. I could see Dimebox Ortiz in front of us, waving one arm frantically out his window. His driver’s-side door was smashed against the guardrail. Water was sluicing into his shotgun window.
Behind us, Lalu and Kiko were barely discernible at the edge of the water, watching mutely as our two vehicles were trash-compacted against the guardrail.
The railing moaned. Our van skidded sideways. The Lincoln’s back left wheel slipped over the edge, and Dimebox’s whole car began to tilt up on the right, threatening to flip over in the force of the water.
I grabbed Erainya’s cell phone, dialed 911, but in the roar of the flood I couldn’t hear anything. The LCD read, Searching for Signal. The water inside the van was up to my ankles.
“Rope,” I shouted to Erainya. “You still have rope?”
“We have to stay inside, honey. We can’t-”
“I’m getting Ortiz out of that car.”
“Honey-”
“He won’t make it otherwise. I’ll tie off here.”
“Honey, he isn’t worth it!”
Ortiz was yelling for help. He looked… tangled in something. I couldn’t tell. Nothing but his head was above water.
I looked back at Jem, who for once wasn’t focused on the PlayStation.
“Pass me the rope behind your seat,” I told him. “You’re the man of the van, okay?”
“I can’t swim,” he reminded me.
His eyes were calm-that creepy calm I only saw when he tried to remember his life before Erainya, his thoughts thickening into a protective, invisible layer of scar tissue.
I shoved him the cell phone. “It’s okay, champ. Keep trying 911.”
He passed me the rope-fifty feet of standard white propylene. I didn’t know why Erainya stored it in the van. I suppose you never knew when you’d have to tie somebody up. Or maybe Dr. Dreamboat the ENT had strange proclivities. I didn’t want to ask.
I made a knot around the steering column, a noose around my waist. Then I rolled down the passenger’s-side window and got a face full of rain.
I climbed outside, lowered myself into the current, and got slapped flat against the van.
Up ahead, a few impossible feet, the passenger’s side of the Lincoln was bobbing in the current. I could see Dimebox Ortiz in the driver’s seat, up to his earlobes in water.
I didn’t so much walk as crawl along the side of the van.
My efforts spurred Lalu and Kiko into a new round of yelling. I couldn’t make out words. Maybe they were arguing about whether they could blow me up without hurting Dimebox.
I kept the rope taut around my waist, inching out a step at a time, not even kidding myself that I could keep my footing. The side of the van was the only thing that kept me from being swept away.
